Most boring books

[Kegg]

Atlas Shrugged, if only because it took me six months to get through John Galt's speech, and I love long, pretentious speeches (go Plato!). The Fountainhead has a misanthropic readability to it, but Atlas Shrugged leans towards developing her ideas more in ways that are frequently antithetical to good melodrama.

For example, in Rand's word of the true creative minds struggling against the degenerate leeches, the Foundationhead gives us a sneering arch-villain with Ellsworth Toohey who is fun to read ranting. By Atlas Shrugged, enemy needs to be more faceless and weak to fit in with her views of moochers, but that makes them considerably less fun. And so on.

Also, is it bad that my first thought on seeing the Bible picture is that it has the wrong disclaimer? It should have the boilterplate legal rhetoric for historical fiction if one's going with that gag...

 

[Snaploud]

Also, it's gotta be said:

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Probably the dullest book I actually read full through. (I enjoyed Moby-Dick, but freely admit to skimming and even skipping some of the diversionary chapters.) Would likely never have finished it if I hadn't been intent on keeping up with the cultural conversation.

Interesting. Did you find the other books in that series boring or just the Deathly Hallows?

For sheer and utter torture, I'd nominate Ulysses by James Joyce. God Almighty. Seven sentences that take up 30 pages?!? As one of my college classmates remarked, "Well, that's just being a dick!"

I'm having a flash-back to freshman year of high school. It's funny how I ended up with a fiancee who loves such books.

 

[Tora Ziyal]

Anything by Joseph Conrad. And, yes, Joyce's Ulysses.

 

[Saga]

Chapterhouse Dune. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. The Three Musketeers. i've tried to read Three Musketeers several, several times but i can never get past the first chapter.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Yes, The Three Musketeers, not exactly boring, but it simply holds no interest. I love The count of Monte Cristo, but have not been able to get into any other of Dumas's works. I notice someone mentioned Ivanhoe up thread. I didn't find it boring so much as Ivanhoe is one of the most useless heroes in fiction. Not a bad character, he just spends most of the novel lamed from an early battle in the book, while Rebecca should be the named protagonist. I hated that Ivanhoe and Rebecca didn't end up together at the end. Ivanhoe was far more frustrating than boring. I can second War and Peace as a frustrating novel. The first third is delightfully realized as a world of vast complex characters, but then the novel becomes a very dull set of plot monkeys all to illustrate Tolstoy's view of History and the futility of looking for Great Men in History. A fine story was pole axed in order to shovel historical ideology down the reader's throat.

 

[WillsBabe]

Tom Jones; Tristram Shandy; Joseph Andrews spring to mind immediately.

 

[Derishton]

Of course it's boring that way, that's not what it was written for and it's a terrible way to experience the material. Lit teachers should be forbidden from assigning Shakespeare that way.

You're right that plays are meant to be seen in performance, but literature classes aren't really about entertainment. Ideally, you read the play and you see at least one full performance, and several versions of key scenes.

I've never made it through Tristram Shandy (love the Coogan film, though), but I love Ulysses (despite the fact I'll probably never get around to reading it again). I managed to finish Ayn Rand's We The Living when I was a teenager, but I have no idea how managed it.

 

[23skidoo]

Moby Dick. After years of everyone telling me how good the book is, and being intrigued by the Laurie Anderson "opera" based upon it (and attending a question and answer session with Laurie in which she again espoused its virtues), I tried reading the thing. I only got about 75 pages into it before I decided "enough". I just found it incredibly boring and it's not a good sign when the phrase "just get to the damn fish already" kept popping up in my head. What's even more amazing is (according to Laurie) the book's original version didn't even have Ahab in it - I can't imagine how interminable it must have been if the opening chapters were the norm. And it's not that I expected an "action adventure" or anything - I know what type of book this is, but it takes so long for Melville to get anything going that I left Ish and his buddy with the shrunken head fetish at the inn.

I also have to cite Fellowship of the Ring. Again, everyone I know loves the Lord of the Rings books; my dad has them literally memorized; I certainly loved the movies and through my dad knew the story by heart even unread. And I loved reading The Hobbit. But I found it so slow-moving and dull that it took me 4 attempts to read it over a period of 15 years, with me rarely getting past about page 75-100. It was even recommended to me that I skip it and start with The Two Towers. I finally finished Fellowship after ploughing through it for 4 months and at that point said "forget it!" when I was faced with two more books of equal length. Normally I'm capable of reading a 400-pager in about 2 weeks if I'm not swamped with work - I once read James Clavell's Shogun in 3 and that was a pretty detailed novel. They aren't "Moby Dick" by any means, but I read the entire Harry Potter series in less than a month. My personal standard is if it takes me a month to read 100 pages the book is failing with me - Gai-Jin by James Clavell (the only Clavell novel I've abandoned), the Doctor Who novel Coming of the Terraphiles by Michael Moorcock, Tristram Shandy and Joyce's Ulysses fall into that category. Though in the case of Ulysses it's the type of book that I can broker absolutely no distractions in order to read, which means I'll probably read it when I'm retired.

Dishonorable mention goes to Emma by Jane Austen, but I'm hesitant to include it because my impression of it being a "boring book" comes from it being taught very poorly in university. Similarly, I personally consider To Kill a Mockingbird one of the worst books I've ever read - but that's due to the incompetent way in which it was taught to me back in high school, which destroyed any desire I ever had to read the book (or see the movie) ever again. I wonder how many works of literature have been destroyed for people because of teachers who couldn't teach with a damn?

Alex

 

[Alidar Jarok]

The question's too subjective to be useful. It's like asking about boring films.

Gone with the Wind.

 

[Shaytan]

I love The count of Monte Cristo, but have not been able to get into any other of Dumas's works.

Blasphemy !

 

[Admiral2]

The question's too subjective to be useful. It's like asking about boring films.

Gone with the Wind.

Bridesmaids

 

[trekkiebaggio]

Parts of The Aeneid were tough. I usually love Nietzsche but I'm reading Beyond Good and Evil at the moment and I'm finding it really tough. Hegel I always found near impossible to read.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

The question's too subjective to be useful. It's like asking about boring films.

Gone with the Wind.

Bridesmaids

Never saw it. It got good reviews, but I'm sure Gone with the Wind did too (except from the Catholic church, which disliked the profanity).

 

[Miss Chicken]

i thought Titanic was a very boring movie until it actually hit the iceberg. My son, who normally loves war movies, thinks Pearl Habor is the most boring movie he has seen.

 

[trekkiebaggio]

Most boring movie I've ever seen is probably Rachel Getting Married.

 

[Admiral2]

Gone with the Wind.

Bridesmaids

Never saw it. It got good reviews, but I'm sure Gone with the Wind did too (except from the Catholic church, which disliked the profanity).

Bridesmaids got great reviews...from women reviewers. With men it was hit and miss. With me it was miss by a country mile.

 

[Saga]

in high school i found Great Expectations to be extremely boring. i've been thinking of giving it another chance now that i'm much older.

 

[captcalhoun]

(except from the Catholic church, which disliked the profanity).

Fuck the Catholic Church. Fuck them in their stupid asses.

 

[Gaith]

Interesting. Did you find the other books in that series boring or just the Deathly Hallows?

I thought GoF was pretty lame, too, but at least it kept the action to Hogwarts. The endless camping of DH is what made me want to be done with the series already.

 

[Miss Chicken]

On his website, on the Lost in a Good Book page, Jasper Fforde is conducting a survey to see what books his readers think belong in the Ten Most Boring Classics

The results are

1) Moby Dick
2) Ulysses
3/4) Pilgrim's Progress
War and Peace
5) Silas Marner
6/7) Faeirie Queen
Paradise Lost
8) Pamela
9/10) Hard Times
Ivanhoe